


Some Kind of Solidarity

by feroxargentea



Category: due South
Genre: F/F, It's mostly about the shoes, M/M, pre-slash if you want it to be, the inevitability of Canadian shacks, which obviously I do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-22 08:36:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3722281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feroxargentea/pseuds/feroxargentea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stella and Meg: dangerous when sober. Tonight they’re not.</p><p>  <i>“I can’t let Fraser go, I need him,” she said. “Him in his little uniform, with his little car to drive me places. I’ll keep him as a pet, name him Fwuffy or Pootles.”</i><br/><i>“Uh-huh,” I said. “You know I’m gonna quote you on that.”</i><br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Kind of Solidarity

**Author's Note:**

> Flipside/companion piece to "K for Kowalski". Their timelines overlap, so it doesn't matter which you read first.
> 
> With thanks to Sunny and Cari for beta and cocktails, and to the rest of C-Spot for taking the mickey. I love you guys.

**__________________________________________________________**

**Some Kind of Solidarity**

 

**1\. Social Insects**

“We ought to do this more often. It’s just so hard to find the time these days.” Meg downed the remaining inch of her Cosmopolitan in a determined, Mountie-always-gets-her-fix kind of way.

“Really? Because you never seem all that...” I hesitated, wary. A couple of evenings out on the town had been enough to teach me that she could be a whole ball of prickles, at least until she was a few drinks to the good. “I mean, the Consulate never seems all that...”

“Busy?” She put her glass down, head to one side, assessing me, and for a minute I thought that was it, she’d walk. (Not that it mattered, not that she was anyone—not exactly—but...damn.) Then she touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip and I realized she was trying not to smile. “The place you picked me up from, you do know that’s just the state entrance, don’t you, Stella? That’s just the West Wing. Behind that are the gardens, the manicured lawns, the areas we use for formal receptions and for Her Royal Highness to walk the corgis.”

“You’re kidding! She’s actually...?”

“Not yet, they get so airsick. And behind that there’s the East Wing—we call it the East Wing, but it’s this whole complex of hideous concrete annexes. And then right on the far side of the block there’s the business entrance, with all the little applicants lined up behind velvet ropes and all the little ants scuttling around.”

“Ants?”

“You know, clerks and whatnot.” She gestured on the table, her scurrying fingers leaving vodka trails. “The ants. Dozens of them.”

“Meg!” I pointed my cocktail stick at her. “Your valued colleagues, you mean.”

“Okay, not ants, then.” Behind her glass, I could tell she was hiding a grin. Another drink or three, and the last trace of guilt would fade and her true irresponsibility would shine through. “What are those weird pale ones called? The ones that never see the sun?”

“Termites?”

“Yup. Them.”

I laughed—couldn’t help it—and got up to head to the bar. My wristwatch caught my eye: ten o’clock. The files could wait. They’d still be there when I got home.

 

**2\. Canapés**

“I made ASA at thirty-four, Meg. That ain’t bad going.”

We’d moved on to a classier bar by now, less crowded, and gotten a booth in a corner where we didn’t have to shout to be heard.

“ASA,” she repeated. “Assistant State’s Attorney, right? When your home-room teacher asked what you wanted to be when you grew up, I bet you didn’t say ‘I wanna be an _assistant_ ’.”

In the dimness, it was hard to tell how much she meant that to hurt. I frowned at her anyway. “Hey, it’s not like I’m just there to fetch the coffee.”

“I know that, you loon,” she said, stabbing a straw into her piña colada and swirling it viciously. “Titles aren’t nothing, though. Titles matter.”

“Okay,” I conceded—and maybe she hadn’t meant it to hurt at all, maybe she was just doing that whole truthfulness thing she did. That Mountie thing. “Okay, yeah. The ambition, I got that in spades, always did, but it’s not about that. It’s about the politics, the power plays. Who’s pulling the strings, who you happen to know, who you can get to know. I had a good head-start but haven’t gotten a hell of a lot of traction since. Plus, I married the wrong guy.” I realized I was shredding the corner of my beer mat and tossed it back on the table. “Oh come on, Meg, don’t pull Shocked Face on me like you wouldn’t ace Miss All-Canadian Cynic 1999.”

“Nope, not guilty. I bailed at the Provincial head-to-heads. You should have seen Miss Saskatchewan, talons like a wolverine.” She flashed her nails at me: nice manicure. “I get your point, though. I’ve been scrabbling around forever on the same damn ladder.”

“So you know how it works, right?” I said. “You stamp on people’s hands from time to time or you get stamped on. It’s not like you enjoy it—or maybe you do—but you gotta do it regardless. And my ex, he was a nice enough guy, but he had zero connections and he wasn’t worth dragging to political schmooze-ups, waaay too much effort, so...”

“It’s okay, Stella, I get it.” And from her expression, yeah, she got it. “I’ve met him, remember? And I get that you need the contacts, the right word in the right ear. That’s just the way it is. Especially for a woman.”

I shrugged, still a little defensive. I’d never liked to be seen playing the Glass Ceiling card. Even with another woman. Even when it was true.

“Look, I know my job’s a joke,” she said quickly, her eyes on the beer-streaked chrome of the table. “I’m a figurehead, no real power, I _know_ that. But what I do have is access. Functions, receptions, blah blah, I get invites to the lot. Dull stuff: networking, schmoozing, as you say. Anyone who’s anyone in this city, sooner or later I have to go eat their canapés.”

I nodded, and this time she met my gaze. Kinda warily, like I might stamp on her hands or something, but she met it.

“So what I’m saying is, any time you want to be my plus-one, call my assistant and he’ll fix it up. Deal?”

I studied my glass a moment and then clinked it against hers. “Deal.”

Hey, a contact was a contact. And a few less nights in with the paperwork and a few more out with Meg Thatcher sounded...okay. Yeah. Sounded okay.

 

**3\. Pretty Faces**

The third bar was a misstep. Not so much sophisticated, more straight-out sleazy. To hell with this: one more drink and I’d call it a night. I’d say what I came to say, and then I could go home, get out of my work clothes, grab some sleep, maybe even look semi-human for the DAs’ meeting at ten. Call Meg in a few days, perhaps. Perhaps not. I waited for the bartender’s gaze to rise from blouse to eyelevel, ordered mojitos, and pushed my way across the sticky floor back to our corner.

“Look, Meg, I hate to bring it up,” I said, “but we gotta sort this Fraser thing out.”

She snorted, an honest-to-goodness, unladylike, unCanadian snort. “God, don’t even talk to me about Fraser. He’s just so—”

“Annoying?” I suggested. It was basic word association, but she seemed to find it amusing.

“Cute, he’s so _cute_ ,” she said. “It pisses me off. It’s distracting when I’m so _busy_ and I’m trying to _work_ and he’s standing there in his _uniform,_ and I know he can’t help it but...”

“For Christ’s sake, girl, you’re way too good for him! You know you are!”

“You think?”

“’Course you are. You’re smart and you’re gorgeous and you’re going places. And anyway, you need someone who’s more than a pretty face. You need an old hand at the schmoozing game, someone you wouldn’t have to boss around all the time.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “You boss your ex around all the time. I’ve seen it. You snap, he jumps. Beautiful sight.”

“Right, and look how that turned out.”

“Hmm. Hey, Stell, you know who’s _really_ annoying? I don’t get it, I don’t get how you ever put up with him. _Why_ you ever put up with him.”

I shrugged, because a shrug pretty much covered it. If you’ve been there, you’ve been there, and if you ain’t, you ain’t. But she had her head cocked, waiting for my answer like I was Dear Abby and Oprah Winfrey and the Dalai Lama all rolled into one. Assistant State’s Relationship Guru on the up, stamping on your hands.

“Um, I guess maybe that’s how you know it’s love?” I said lamely. “When you’re aware that someone’s kind of a dick but you put up with them anyway?”

(If you do, which I hadn’t, not in the end. Ray—my Ray—with those sidelong glances from under his eyelashes: _Look at me, LOOK at me_. It wasn’t me he was watching these days, hadn’t been for a while now.)

“Aww, you’re such a romantic,” Meg said. “I’m going to find someone like that some day too.”

“Someone who can put up with you?” I pulled my best skeptical face, the special one I keep for low-wattage defendants. “Yeah, good luck with that.”

She giggled, an unaffectedly, unashamedly girly giggle that made me suddenly glad I’d thrown away a whole evening I should have been working on the Gerardis case, just to waste it with her instead.

“Screw you, Stella,” she said. “I’m much too pretty to be annoying. And all I’m asking in return is perfection. Is that so unreasonable?”

“Nah, because you’re _gorgeous_.”

“Ex-act-ly. You said it.” She picked up her mojito. “Cheers.”

 

**4\. Ice chips**

The fourth bar was twilit, with a vibe that aimed at “moody” and landed four-square on “dismal”. In the murk, Meg’s eyes looked as dark as chocolate, and it was making me hungry.

(Okay, kinda weird. I _was_ hungry, though—hungry and a little lightheaded. I hadn’t eaten since three that afternoon. Three o’clock in the corridor of the grubby old 27 th, waiting to chew the hide off of one or other of Lieutenant Welsh’s dumbass detectives: take your pick, none of ’em could preserve a scene worth a damn. Three o’clock, and Ray had me pinned against the wall, getting in my face like he always did, only more so, because he’d just nearly gotten Fraser killed and somehow that was my business— _You charged those motherfuckers yet? Gonna throw the fucking book, right?_ _—_ till Welsh pulled him away, nodding at me, pushing a vending-machine sandwich into my hand as he turned. BLT, heavy on the mayo. Nothing I’d have picked in a million years. God, it was good.)

Back to the topic. Back to the topic, before I lost track of it. I got a good head for drink—the one worthwhile thing I got from my dad—but not _that_ good. Not on an empty stomach, anyway.

“Meg, that Fraser thing,” I said. “What I meant was, we gotta sort out who’s going to look after him once he’s out the hospital. While he’s, y’know, bedbound.”

“Ha! I knew you’d be trying to get a peek under his sheets, I knew it. I call dibs. Ooh, and diplomatic privilege, too.” She slammed her White Russian down, slopping vodka onto the table. “Beat that, Yank.”

“Meg!”

“What? Don’t tell me you don’t want to. You want to. You’ve seen the guy.”

(And yeah, okay, I’d seen the guy. We’d all seen the guy. Best to acknowledge it, move on.)

“Quit smirking, I’m trying to be serious here,” I said. “You ever had to look after someone? Seriously, though?”

“What, someone sick?”

“Yeah, someone sick. Have you?”

“Yes. Um, yeah, I have.” She pushed her drink aside and started to pick at a flake of nail polish that hadn’t been loose, hadn’t needed picking. Perfect manicure, not so perfect now. “Uh, my mom, before she went into the hospice. Breast cancer. They caught it too late. It was, y’know, it was a mess.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. Mine died at home. Ovarian. Same difference.”

(There’d been nothing left of her, not at the end. All those tumors and all that blood, and still she’d weighed nothing. My brothers away over the other side of the city, too busy living their busy lives to help out. And Ray, bringing ice chips for my mom, coffee for me. Ray washing the bloodied sheets. Ray sitting up nights with my mom, because it never occurred to him not to.)

“Look, Fraser’s ass wouldn’t be so cute when you’re wiping the shit off of it,” I said. “No, look at me, it’s true. And he’s too heavy, bigger than me, bigger than you. You wanna break your back? Nope. Ray’ll do it; he’ll do it if I tell him to. I snap, he jumps. We should just leave it to him.”

“Ugh.” She pulled a face. “Maybe _that’s_ the sign you love someone, when you don’t mind changing their bedpan.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you might be onto something there.”

We were quiet for a while after that, and I was starting to think we should move on, maybe find a place with a less dismal vibe, but then Meg fetched us a round of Sex on the Beach and embarked on a series of improbable tales involving an idiot subordinate of hers, a pair of local mechanics, and a sizeable cultural misapprehension; and deadpan smut in a north-of-the-border accent is always hard to resist. (You tried it? Try it. I dare you.)

When we finally staggered out of the bar, it was one-ish. Not a cab in sight, and it was a hell of a way home. We set off southward, Meg stumbling in her high heels, grabbing at my arm. At the corner, I pulled her up short.

“What size are you?” I asked. “Size, shoes, what size?”

“Uh, sevenish?”

“Perfect.” I fished in my bag and produced a pair of flats, the ones I wore behind my desk when no one was watching.

“Oh my God, Stella, you are my heroine! I love you. You may even be The One.”

“Love you too. Now gimme those before you drop them.” I scooped her shoes from her fumbling hands. Salvatore Ferragamo: nice, though a shade darker than I’d have picked. “Oh, hey, taxi! Taxi!”

The cab swerved to the curb, and I watched Meg climb into the back with tutored elegance. She hadn’t come from money, that I was sure of, even though the whole Canadianness of her sent my preconceptions kind of wiggy. She was well-trained, though. Almost as convincing as I was. She might not have been brought up to slide modestly into chauffeured cars in pencil skirts, but she could do it now, sober or not. (Currently, that would be “not”. A very definite “not”.)

The driver turned to peer at her through the partition. “All right, little lady?”

“Hey, don’t even start with that crap,” I said.

“Sorry,” he said, unabashed. “Where to, girls?”

And I let it slide, because I’m not a bitch or a cow or an ice chip or whatever the hell else people call me when they think I’m out of earshot; I’m human, only human, and I was tired. Slumping back into the seat, I gave him Meg’s address, kicked off my shoes, and rubbed at my abraded heels with my toes.

 

**5\. Log Cabins**

“So you’re okay with the Ray thing?” I asked.

“Huh? Ray and me?” She blinked woozily at me. “That is _so_ not happening.”

“No, you idiot. Him and _Fraser_.”

“Oh. Fine, whatever, I don’t care. He can be the one to play nurse.” She stared past me out of the cab window for a while and then started to laugh. “Hey, for a minute there I thought you meant, y’know...”

“Uh-huh.”

I waited. I thought that might be it, that the silence might last us home. Another night, another time. It would keep. Right now I was too fuzzy to care all that much, or so I could tell myself, anyway.

“Oh,” she said. “Ohhhhhh.”

“Yeah.” I was watching the streetlights change, the fare counter’s slow flicker, the Rorschach smears on the plexiglas partition. Watching anything but her expression, the one I was going to have to get used to, the one that would tell me I was a dupe, a mark, a fool. _Your ex sucks cock_. That one. But when I glanced across, her face held nothing but honest bewilderment.

“You serious?” she asked. “Ray, your Ray, he’s... He’d...?”

“I think so, yeah. I think he might want to, anyway.”

(Ray—my Ray—always in my face, and always just a little in my heart, idiot that he was, idiot that I was. _Look at me, look at me, HELP me._ I couldn’t not.)

“But I thought...” Her sentence trailed off into nothing, but she was pretty and Ray was Ray, and it didn’t take a hotshot lawyer to figure out what he’d made her think.

“Yeah, I know. I know what he’s like,” I said. “But it’s just—it’s the way he talks about Fraser, y’know?”

(Talked about him all the damn time, in fact. Called me up just so he could talk about him, the new best friend, the new obsession. And that’s what I’d wanted for him, right? Yeah. Sometimes I let the machine pick up. Like I said, only human.)

“Look, Meg, I’ve known him since forever. The stuff he’s not telling me, he doesn’t hide it so good. And sure, he can be kind of a jerk—”

“But he’s still your _favorite_ jerk. Speaking of transparent...” She rolled her eyes, literally rolled them. Drama queen. They _were_ nice eyes, though. Heavy on the mascara.

“So let him do this, okay?” I said. “Let him look after Fraser. And if that’s a bust, I give up, I swear. My career as matchmaker, D-U-N done. Lawsuits only, for ever and ever, amen.”

“Yeah but wait, wouldn’t it mean...” Her hands flailed, an uncoordinated flurry. “If he, if they... Wouldn’t that mean a whole cartload of manure hitting the biggest fan ever? His job and his friends and—my God, I can’t even...”

“Yeah, I guess. Chicago PD ain’t exactly Liberal City. All the shit we gotta put up with—”

“Eurgh.”

“—and then some.”

(His job, and his friends, and his dad, and his brother, and all the crap that was coming, all the crap I could do nothing to keep from him, because love is not enough. Because fuck the matchmakers, fuck the poets and all the stupid fucking pop songs: love is never enough.)

“Okay, right, okay. So Ray’s”—she grimaced—“whatever. Don’t know, don’t really care. No offense.”

I nodded. No offense.

“But Fraser, him I _do_ know,” she said. “Thought I knew, anyway. A little, maybe.” She wiped a hand over her mouth. She was starting to look kind of sick: from the booze or the topic or both, hard to tell. “You really think he’s...?”

“Queer?” I said. “No earthly clue. Worth it? Not a fucking chance. But maybe Ray thinks he is.”

I watched her stare unseeing at the neon-lit streets as the night and the fare ticked by.

“Hell, maybe _that’s_ how you know it’s love,” I said into the silence. “That you’d go through all that for someone.”

She weighed that up for a lot longer than it was worth. “Stella?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think I love Fraser that much. Wait, nope, definitely don’t love him that much.”

I huffed out a breath, relaxing back against the seat. “Yeah, and you’re too good for him anyway, remember?”

“Yeah, ’cause I’m _gorgeous_.”

“Right. And because you deserve better.”

“Yeah. Uhh—might be going to throw up, though.”

“Shit. C’mere, put your head down. Down, put it down.” 

She bent low to the footwell for a minute, until her breathing steadied and the skin of her neck faded from greenish-yellow to a plainer pallor. Then she sat up shakily and curled onto the seat, resting her head on my knee.

“Hey, Stell?” she muttered, so I had to lean over her to catch the words. “If you’re right, if that’s what they want—if that’s what _you_ want—I can get a log cabin for them to go live in. I swear, I’m not even joking. I’ll do it.”

“And that’ll make it all okay, huh? That’ll fix everything?”

“Yeah. Log cabins fix everything,” she said with wide-eyed solemnity, like it was some Canadian truism, like I’d failed to read page 1 of _Things Obvious to Everyone but Americans_. “I’ll do it, I swear.”

“Sure. Sure you will.”

The taxi hit a pothole, jolting us, smearing her lipstick all over the inner thigh of my pantsuit. That was going to be a fun conversation with my dry-cleaner.

“Oof, sorry,” she said groggily, rubbing at the cloth, streaking Luscious Cherry further into it.

“It’s okay. Just try not to puke on my Manolo Blahniks.”

“God, cabs suck. They _suck_. I can’t let Fraser go, I _need_ him. Him in his little uniform, with his little car to drive me places. I’ll keep him as a pet, name him Fwuffy or Pootles.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “You know I’m gonna quote you on that.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re all talk. I’d miss him, though.”

“I know you would.” (And it was true, Chicago would be a quieter place without them. A better place, maybe. Better for all of us.)

For a while she said nothing further, and by the time we pulled up at her apartment block I thought she’d fallen asleep, but when I bent lower I could hear her murmuring to herself.

“A cabin, a goddamn...g’damned log cabin. So it’ll be...’kay...”

“It’ll be okay,” I said, smoothing the hair around her ears. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.” I opened the cab door and pulled her upright as gently as I could. “You’re home now, Meg. Come on, it’ll all be fine.”

“You p-promise?”

“Yeah,” I told her, stepping from the cab and holding out my hand until she took it. I wasn’t even sure who we were talking about anymore—us, them?—and I don’t think she was, either. “Yeah, Meg, I promise. It’ll all be okay.”

 

 

______________________________________________

**Epilogue: life goes on**

Benton Fraser got what he wanted, as he always did.

Ray Kowalski also got what he wanted. I’m told he was worth it.

Diefenbaker sired twenty-seven more puppies, none of which had dual nationality.

Renfield Turnbull stayed in Chicago. He still has car trouble from time to time.

Stella Kowalski moved to Washington D.C. and joined the Special Litigation Division of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia in 2002, where she served for four years before being appointed to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Meg Thatcher requested and received a transfer to the Canadian Embassy in Washington D.C. in 2002. She never did win Miss All-Canadian Cynic. Happiness will do that to a person.


End file.
